


The Hardest Battles

by Coymoonrising



Series: Anders Drabbles [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Gen, Mental Illness, Panic Attack, anxiety attack, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:19:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4176174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coymoonrising/pseuds/Coymoonrising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Anders suffers another panic attack alone in the streets of Darktown, it takes everything he has just to get through it. Sometimes the hardest battles we face are those within ourselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hardest Battles

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on my own experiences with panic attacks, so it should be noted that this might be triggering. So proceed with caution, all ye readers.

There were times when Anders felt almost normal. Well—as normal as one could even be. For starters, being a mage set him apart from the beginning. But even with that curse, he had felt almost human. It was possible for him to enjoy the feeling of rain on his upturned cheeks. It was possible for him to breathe deeply the scent of the spring forest and cough on chimney smoke. It was possible for him to laugh heartily in a tavern in the dead of night without anyone chastising him. But those moments were fleeting, and in retrospect he often wondered if they really happened at all. Because it all inevitably came crashing down on him—crashing with such force that it left him gasping for air, clawing at his chest to press his beating heart back inside. There were times when Anders felt almost normal, but this was not one of those times.

His face was pressed firmly in his hands as he sat on the pebble-strewn floor of one of Darktown’s many pathways. Gasping breaths fought for life between his trembling fingers, the sound warped and amplified by the cups of his palms into thick, demonic hissing. Anders held his eyes shut tightly, though the tears poured freely over the grimace hidden behind his hands. Part of his hair had fallen from the tie and stuck in wet clumps to the sides of his face, but he couldn’t begin to care. He was trapped inside his body, trapped inside his mind as it screamed and careened out of control with him helpless to stop it. Wordless, his thoughts tore him from the inside out and he pressed his knees into his chest as the open space compressed him into something so small he thought he might become a red stain in the dirt. He knew this would pass—he knew this attack would end. But that didn’t help—it didn’t stop it.

Wet palms curled into fists as Anders felt the embers of hate ignite that familiar fire of self-loathing. Was he really so pathetic? Hardly able to function—what sort of a man was he? The weakest of the mages, the most cowardly of the Wardens—the most disgusting thing to walk this earth, and an Abomination no less! This feeling in his chest—this unending panic, this anxiety that drove him into fits of tears and hair-pulling in the night—it beat him into the ground, turning a tall revolutionary into a terrified wreck on the side of the street. He could feel the gravel beneath his boots and he knew that that was where he belonged. The slap of leather soles beat on his nerves as passersby continued, blissfully and purposefully unaware of him. Anders choked on his saliva as a desperate gasp turned against him, sending him whirling to the side in a fit of coughs. A ghost-white hand drove it’s fingers into the ground.

Justice—Justice, he begged, stop this—please do something—

But the spirit was silent. Emotions—vivid, lush emotions—he thought they were hard for Justice to understand, and in the dominating, all-consuming power of an attack Justice was no more help to him than air to a fish. But that didn’t stop him from reaching out, from trying to regain some semblance of control when it all fell apart—

Outside himself, Anders clutched his chest and pushed. Slow, forceful, steady—he forced his desperate lungs to draw in air so slowly he thought he might pass out. He felt dizzy, and his stomach gave a wretched lurch as nausea tickled the back of his throat in a threat he knew well was not light. When he exhaled, he counted. One… Two… Three… Four…

Then, he inhaled. One… Two… Three… Four…

His mind broke against his rising wall like a hurricane swell. It lashed out, another panic seizing him and once again Anders held his eyes shut as his world spun. One… Two… Three—

There he was, on the floor, like some pathetic thing, and what good had he ever done for anyone when he was so obviously pathetic? He could feel the eyes of the Undercity judging him now, burning his skin with scathing glances and the lashes of their whispering. He was weak—he was so, so— He clenched his fists, forcing out a determined grunt.

One… Two…

The Templars would come for him any day now. That would be it. He would become a Tranquil for this—finally, after so many escapes, they would put him down like the strays that wandered the underbelly. They would display him before the Knight-Commander in chains. They would throw him in a cell again. They would confine him to solitary. They would forget him until he starved, and he would die alone without ever seeing the rays of the sun again. Never to feel the grass beneath his feet again, to feel the wind whip his robes and the dust scatter across his cheeks. It was only a matter of time. Anders lived on borrowed time. It was time, ticking away endlessly, counting down his days of freedom—

He couldn’t—he couldn’t do this. A choked sob fell into his sleeve as Anders gave in, no longer feeling the warmth of the tears that rolled freely from him. His heart pounded in his ears, drowning him in a fit of his own despair as unthinkable terror took a hold of it and squeezed so tightly that at any moment Anders expected to collapse and to die. He was broken. He was a toy unworthy of fixing, a cracked mirror with a thousand hideous reflections all pointed at his face with hands that trembled with ample mockery. He was nothing—no, he wished to be nothing. To not be here, to be in this moment. He was a star collapsing into a black hole.

He flung his mind into the open sky, picturing himself freely among the clouds as a bird. But the image was unsettling. Far too wide, he was exposed on all sides. He pictured himself deep underground, safely in a dark space that was quiet and warm. But this too would provide no solace: he was trapped, claustrophobia working his every nerve. There was nowhere he could go. There was nothing he could do. He could only wait, counting his breaths away in a futile attempt to calm down. He wanted so badly to be normal sometimes. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of this.

The rivers streaking through the dust on his cheeks eventually began to run dry. A breath caught in his throat again and Anders swallowed, feeling his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth with an unpleasant bitterness. In the pause he felt Justice stir, exploring cautiously through the debris field of their shared mind. He wanted to know if Anders was alright, despite Anders feeling an unusual rawness from his ever stoic partner. Anders couldn’t bring himself to reply. He sat in the alleyway for the better part of another hour, staring with glossy eyes at everything and nothing all at once. When he did finally move, his body felt stiff as stone. Each step was a learning experience as he recovered his sense of self and physical sensation was disturbing, and yet reassuring.

It was no easy task returning to his clinic, but Anders managed. The lantern remained unlit and he was thankful to find his establishment barren and devoid of the desperate. The strange nothingness that settled into his core would not allow him to put out milk tonight. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to do anything, except cease to be. Dark circles worked their way below his eyes, exhaustion serving as the storyteller of his frustrations. He trekked into the back, past the pantry. Any food would all be dry and tasteless. He couldn’t imagine eating. Slipping into his private chambers, Anders let himself fall onto his bed. Fully clothed, he buried himself. He needed sleep.He needed to shut down.

His sleep was restless and disturbed that night.


End file.
